ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the existing international laws and norms for interventions as they currently stand. It focuses mainly on Article VII of the UN Charter and the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine. The chapter provides the background for intervention policy in natural hazard scenarios. It also provides context to and make a distinction between intervention, just intervention and disaster relief. The chapter discusses two major normative approaches to intervention: Just War Theory and the Responsibility to Protect. In discussing Just War Theory the chapter provides one way of understanding when it is just/appropriate to intervene into the affairs of another state. It describes the relevant components of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) which offers alternative guidance as to when to intervene. RtoP establishes norms of intervention for genocide, humanitarian emergencies, human rights abuses and crimes against humanity but it does not apply to post-natural hazard scenarios.
